Reel Expression

(Picture: flying somewhere over Canada)

You know, I never realize just how far away from my family I am until I visit. From door to door, it’s around 18 hours. 1h 30m tube ride to Heathrow to arrive 3 hours before the flight. Around 8h in the air from London to Chicago. Another 2h 30m + waiting for the connecting flight. 1h 30m Chicago -> Omaha. Then another 1h 30m drive Omaha -> Lincoln. Add in baggage and, immigration and customs and the total time is 18 hours. Bleh.

Then you have jet lag, lack of sleep and the fact I hadn’t seen them for almost 2 years and it really wasn’t really a holiday. When I first bought the tickets the plan was to spend 15 days in the pool doing fuck all. But nothing ever works the way that you plan. We brought the horrible English weather with us so swimming was pretty much out of the question.

I hate to shop and London shopping is probably the worst yet. My personal taste in clothing usually just amounts to jeans and plain tees. Doing martial arts for so many years since the age of 7 has given me a figure that is very difficult to find clothes. Jeans never fit and shirts are always far too tight around the arms. But clothes there are 1/2 off at least for me (love that exchange rate sometimes) so the first couple of days were spent running around doing all sorts of shopping. While some would call that a holiday, I just can’t.

So we got into the States late Tue night, shopped, then flew out again to Chicago for SLCC on Friday morning. I was still jet lagged and not used to the time difference. The entire SLCC thing was a very strage experience that I’ll have to give an entire post for. Let’s just say right now that it was little sleep, lots of alcohol and the worst hangovers I’ve had in a long time.

One of the things I really hate about the States is their obsession with carding for tabacco and alcohol. In England its 16 to smoke and 18 to drink. I never have to worry about it here. I’m 29 but as Lordfly said as SLCC, I look 20. Most people would like that but when you grow up looking far younger then you are and are treated as such it’s fucking annoying. At the shitty bar in the Hilton at SLCC, every single time I ordered a drink even from the same person I was carded. It was absolutly annoying.

We fly back to NE on Monday afternoon and it’s finally hot outside. Luckily most of that week I spent on a raft in the pool reading. That week was actually rather relaxing. I helped my mother buy a laptop and a photo printer (HP of course) and showed her how to use it. We went to see Harry Potter, Hairspray and Stardust. All good films :) We watched a lot of TV on their massive flatscreen that takes up most of the lounge.

Food
OMFG how much weight did I put on? It’s no wonder that part of my childhood was spent as a chubby kid. Here we eat pretty healthy. I have a lot of salads, 1/2 the meals we have a vegatarian and generally everything is fresh food. When you are in NE during the corn season, you eat a lot of it. We had fantastic steak on the grill with corn. We had burgers, tater tots and corn. We had BLTs and corn. Laugh all you want but if you’d never had hybrid white and yellow corn on the cob that was picked that morning you really are missing out. My hubbie always looks at me funny when I talk about it but once he tried it, he really shut the fuck up.

Ok so the midwest really isn’t known for it’s Mexican food. That’s kind of a shame actually. I’ve lived in SF and ate mexican in the Mission. I’ve been to Mexico a number of times. My brother lived in Arizona and I visited them at least once a year after I moved to SF and my nephew was born. What a lot of people don’t like to talk about is the large number of mexicans living in the midwest working in the slaughterhouses. Anywhere that there is a large population of one culture there is going to be at least a few traditional restaurants. MMM burritos and margaritas.

Then you have a place called Runza. Ok you can laugh now. My mother likes to tell this story of when I was 3: I was playing in the yard when she came out to tell me it was time for lunch. She went back inside to finish getting it ready waiting for me to come in. She waited. She waited some more. She went back outside and I was no where to be seen. She became frantic of course, checking different neighbours if they’d seen me. Finally down the road she sees a child pulling a red wagon who stops occasionally to get something from inside the wagon. Eventually she realizes it’s me. I had gone to Runza for some lunch and the girl at the counter had given me some french fries.

Runza is part fast food part not. Meaning it looks like a fast food place but the food is fresh. They make the onion rings in the store. They make the fries in the store. The burgers are not frozen patties that take 2 min to reheat. The price is only just a bit higher then regular fast food and from the amount of stores they have all over NE it’s still doing really well. Is it better for you than fast food? It’s still a bunch of fried stuff but who knows what McDonalds adds to their “fries” to make them taste real. If you ever have to be in NE I highly suggest giving it a try.

Family
(Picture: my niece Ella, the 3 year old cheeky monkey who had a great time posing for me.)

If you hadn’t already guessed, I’m quite close to part of my family. We’re as dysfunctional as you can get but instead of bothering me I sort of like parts of it. Granted it was pretty difficult to grow up with it and anyone I tell about it really feels sorry for me. But I really hate it when they do that. The simplest explination is that I have an emotionally souless father who was mentally, emotionally and a little bit physically abusive. Most of the abuse was directed at my mother so when they divorced when I was 10 my young overly logical self was actually very happy about it. But like I said, don’t feel sorry for me. The way I like to think about it is that I would not be who I am today without going through it. Not to mention that I don’t know if I’d be as close to my terrbily boring “normal” accountant brother. Luckily because of it my mother worked overly hard to “make up” for it as she says. Meaning that she worked extra hard to make sure my brother didn’t turn out like him or that I never would accept being treated like that. I think she did a great job as my brother is an amazing father.

For Labour day we drove up to Iowa to my brother’s house. My mother’s side of the family is from Des Moines and many of them still live there, so all of us decended on my brother’s house for pizza and beer. I have no desire or plan of having any children but I sure do like being around my nieces and nephews. My bother has 3 - Easton (6) Ella (3) and Emmarie (3months). Hubby’s sister has 4 - Michael (6) Thomas (3) William (1) and Harry (3 weeks). With that large amount of people and running after the 3 kids all day - ok well Emmarie just layed there - it was a crazy weekend.

We then drove home on Monday night tired and completly out of it.

Homeward bound
Get back to NE late Monday, swim and pack on tue, leave on wed at 11am CST and then get home at 11am BST thur. Bleh. Jet lag is pretty bad going to the States, but it’s worse flying here. There is a fantastic book by William Gibson called Pattern Recognition that is the best description of flying to the UK and being an American in London. He wrote that it feels like your soul is still trying to catch up and that’s just what it feels like. You are there, but not fully. As if something is just missing. As a side note he calls the UK the “mirror world” where everything sort of looks the same but is backwards. Fucking true. I highly suggest reading it.

So we get home and I (of course) first shoot over to the den to check emails. I try and turn the computer on and… nothing. Nothing at all happens. Fucking hell. Good news is that I know exactally what is wrong - it’s the power supply. If shopping in London is a nightmare, computer shopping is the devil. Ok.. computer part shopping anywhere but online is pretty bad. No one ever stocks the good stuff. HD crashed a while ago and no one had a fucking western digital 7200 rpm SATA. The power supplies that I could find were all shit. So I just gave up on using the desktop for the day and ordered online and payed way too much for next day delivery. So instead of doing what I really wanted to do - we watched movies zonked out of our minds.

What did I really want to do? Deal with customers. *laugh* NO. I actually have little issue with customers annoying me (I’m annoyed rather easy) but I did get a pile of really really really nasty IMs over my holiday. Not to mention the day before flying to SLCC my CS rep, Sara, decided to take a break. From what I hear, she’s been getting a lot of shit from people on a daily basis. So while that’s pretty horrible timing, I completly understand. Usually when I do take a holiday I’ll still deal with IMs, but the amount and the abusive nature of many of them was out of hand by the time I arrived in the States. I’m sorry but it’s completly out of line for anyone to curse that much as someone for taking a fucking holiday. As if I’m not actually allowed one. As if their demands for a shop means I can’t visit my family. Fuckers.

What I really wanted to do was play a game that I got a beta invite for the fist full day of my holiday. I tried to play on the computer I handed down to my mother, not a chance. I tried it on her new laptop - again no. I tried it on my laptop when I got home, nadda. It’s a game that I’ve been waiting for at least a year or maybe even 2. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I got the power supply on Friday, installed it, turned it on, and all’s fixed!! Ok.. it’s Sunday now and I still haven’t logged into SL. I’m dreading it. Avoiding. I’m still not all here. I have this odd feeling that if I’m not in my right mind I may go off on someone.